A list of ALEC corporations, and what you can do

If you’re brand new to ALEC, here’s a taste from SourceWatch.org (my emphasis and paragraphing):

ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that.

Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. Along with legislators, corporations have membership in ALEC. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve “model” bills.

They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. (ALEC says that corporations do not vote on the board.)

[Corporations] fund almost all of ALEC’s operations. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations—without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills.

ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 of these bills introduced by legislative members every year, with one in every five of them enacted into law. ALEC describes itself as a “unique,” “unparalleled” and “unmatched” organization. It might be right. It is as if a state legislature had been reconstituted, yet corporations had pushed the people out the door.

This is how the Movement Conservative project has gained control of many state legislatures. Think of it — over 1000 ALEC-authored bills introduced in the states each year. Who else has that kind of power?

So let’s look at a few lists.

■ The following names the 23 corporations on ALEC’s corporate board. These are the Daddy Dinos, the Bigs; the other corporations (below) are just associate predators.

Listed with the names are the company’s total lobbying expenditures, not just via ALEC, but its entire reach. (Note that the 2011 totals are through June only — just a half-year’s worth of politician-purchases).

Organization

2009

2010

2011

Altria Group

12,770,000

$10,360,000

$5,480,000

American Bail Coalition

$0

$80,000

$35,000

AT&T; Inc.

$14,729,673

$15,395,078

$11,690,000

Bayer AG

$8,478,512

$4,903,640

$3,380,000

Coca-Cola Co.

$9,390,000

$7,352,795

$3,450,000

Diageo PLC

$2,250,000

$2,620,000

$1,100,000

Energy Future Holdings Corp.

$3,974,014

$4,731,228

$2,770,000

Exxon Mobil

$27,430,000

$12,450,000

$6,820,000

GlaxoSmithKline

$8,760,000

$6,070,000

$2,650,000

Intuit Inc.

$2,142,000

$2,249,000

$1,589,000

Johnson & Johnson

$6,560,000

$6,700,000

$3,106,000

Koch Industries

$12,450,000

$8,070,000

$4,060,000

Kraft Foods

$3,390,000

$3,000,000

$1,450,000

Peabody Energy

$5,835,000

$6,591,000

$3,727,000

Pfizer Inc.

$25,819,268

$13,380,000

$7,440,000

PhRMA

$26,150,520

$21,740,000

$9,290,000

Reed Elsevier Inc.

$2,130,000

$1,670,000

$810,000

Reynolds American

$4,556,215

$4,323,293

$1,728,305

Salt River Project

$1,170,000

$870,000

$370,000

State Farm Insurance

$3,420,000

$3,620,000

$1,540,000

United Parcel Service

$8,430,526

$5,587,349

$2,642,399

Wal-Mart Stores

$7,390,000

$6,160,000

$4,070,000

Most of these names should be familiar to you. Koch Industries is obviously the Koch Bros. Wal-Mart is the Walton family. The Kochs and Waltons are two of the eighteen families behind all the “death tax” propaganda.